Earp spoke on a panel with Phelim Kine, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch,
on “The Status of China’s Commitments to Greater Media Reforms,” with a
particular focus on the environment for foreign and Chinese journalists in the
aftermath of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Two other panels addressed coverage of
sensitive news stories in
Chinese news media, and the intersection of information technology and freedom
of expression in China.

A transcript of the event,
including the address Earp gave to the hearing, will be made available on the
USCC.gov Web site in the coming weeks. CPJ’s written submission, which enlarges
on the points raised on the panel, is reproduced below:

September 10, 2009

Madeline Earp

Asia Research Associate

Committee to Protect Journalists

Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

“China’s Media and
Information Controls – The Impact in China
and the United States”

Panel I: The Status of China’s
Commitments to Greater Media Reforms

Thank you for inviting the Committee to Protect
Journalists to participate in today’s hearing.CPJ
has been monitoring press freedom conditions in China and around the world for more
than 25 years. A group of American journalists founded CPJ in 1981, believing
that the strength and influence of the international media could be used to
support journalists who are targeted because of their work. We accept no
government funding.

I want to start with the question of how media reforms
implemented in the run-up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing
have affected the climate for foreign reporters in China.

The major reform for the foreign media CPJ noted in the
run-up to the Olympics were the liberalized reporting rules issued by the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs in January 2007. This was an encouraging step: The
regulations meant journalists no longer needed advance permission from
provincial authorities for every interview they conduct, and that reporters were
free to visit “places open to foreigners designated by the Chinese government.”
Just 15 minutes before the regulations were set to expire at midnight on
October 17, 2008, the Foreign Ministry told a hastily scheduled press
conference they would be extended indefinitely. The significance of that
unusual announcement and the behind-the-scenes negotiations it concealed remain
the subject of speculation.

In general, foreign journalists say the regulations have
made their own travel easier, though violations continue to be logged. Last
month, hundreds of Chinese children were diagnosed with lead poisoning. BBC
correspondent Quentin Sommerville encountered harassment while covering the
story in Shaanxi province: “Explaining that we
had permission from the Foreign Ministry to report from the area proved
pointless,” Somerville
wrote in his report. “The central government has its rules, and we have ours,”
he was told. In July, the independent, Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents
Club of China surveyed 57 of its members to get a sense of problems they’d
encountered since the regulations were introduced two and a half years before. They
received 100 accounts of foreign correspondents being turned away from public
spaces.

The question of access remains a difficult one. Foreign
journalists were barred from Tibet
around the time of the 50th anniversary of a failed anti-government
uprising in March, one year on from the protesting and riots in the region in
2008. In May, foreign reporters said authorities in Sichuan had required them to register for
reporting in areas affected by the 2008 earthquake.

There is change afoot in the Chinese government’s treatment
of foreign journalists, however. The government’s handling of the media in the
aftermath of the July 2009 Xinjiang riots was very different to its response in
Tibet
last year. At that time, and during other outbursts of ethnic unrest in the
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, security forces repeatedly antagonized
and expelled the foreign press corps.

Yet authorities welcomed foreign reporters to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital,
and allowed a privileged enclave of Internet access. Officials instigated an
official tour of the city's ravaged center immediately, in contrast to the
tours they begrudgingly arranged after the Tibetan violence. One American
writer blogging locally even said a Beijing-based agency with government links
had contacted journalists offering to facilitate travel to the region. Security
forces were protecting, rather than harassing, international journalists and
reports of official interference were few.

These are welcome signs, but it would be easy to overstate
the change. Police turned back several reporters trying to work in nearby
Kashgar, and in Guangdong
province, at the site of the southern Chinese factory where a fight between
Uighurs and Han Chinese sparked the first round of protests in June. The
state-run media label anti-government sentiment among ethnic minorities the
work of separatist terrorists. Government-operated tours are designed to
promulgate that view, which is further evidenced by ethnic protesters hijacking
the tours in both Tibet
and Xinjiang. The government’s position has many domestic supporters. After
March 2008, many Chinese people charged that the Western media were biased, and
at least 10 Beijing-based foreign reporters received anonymous death threats. In
July this year, the Foreign Correspondents Club noted concerns about hostility
directed at foreign correspondents “as a result of inflammatory comments in mainstream
Chinese media regarding coverage of Xinjiang. At least two of our members have
received deaths threats, many others have had disturbing telephone calls or
been targeted by email viruses,” the Club said.

China’s
information officials have clearly understood that the international media will
demand free access and are making an effort to come across as open. But they
are finding other ways to guide or to restrict the message. The result is a
confusing, almost schizophrenic attitude toward the press. On June 4, reporters
from CNN, the BBC and the French news agency Agence France-Presse were allowed
onto Tiananmen Square to report on the 20th
anniversary of the 1989 crackdown, but were obstructed by men wielding umbrellas
in front of their cameras.

Two U.S. documentary filmmakers, Jon
Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, were denied visas to attend a Beijing
screening of their film this month about parents grieving children lost in
poorly constructed government buildings during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, according to TheNew
York Times. CPJ colleagues were also denied visas when they applied as
journalists or tourists to travel to Beijing
during the Olympics. There may be a more open reporting environment, but the
government lets journalists in to take advantage of it at its own discretion. And
remember, the results of the reporting are usually not freely available to
Chinese citizens. Foreign news sources remain subject to many forms of
censorship in China,
and are often available only in privileged enclaves. TV news broadcasts have
been interrupted midstream if content is sensitive.

Although reforms were made permanent for foreign reporters, the
government has not otherwise lived up to its pledge to make lasting change in
the media environment as a result of the Olympics. Information officials announced
on February 6 that journalists from Hong Kong and Macau
are required to apply for a press pass from the central government and get
interviewees' consent before every reporting trip to the mainland. Hong Kong and
Macau’s press corps, occupying an uneasy
middle ground between foreign and domestic status, had previously been granted their
own liberalized Olympic regulations that were only slightly more restrictive
than those for international reporters.

Journalists from Hong Kong and Taiwan
have told CPJ they fear China’s
increasing economic influence in their respective territories may be eroding the
freedoms that exist there now. CPJ spoke last week with Daisy Chu, a former
reporter for the Hong Kong issue of Esquire magazine. Her editors withdrew a
feature story on the 20th anniversary of "June 4" event. The media
group that publishes the magazine fired Chu
after she revealed this on her personal blog. Mak Yinting, chairwoman of the
Hong Kong Journalists’ Association, told us it was the first time in 25 years
as a journalist she had heard of a colleague in Hong Kong
being fired for writing about June 4.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the recent reforms shift
the onus for critical comments onto sources, interviewees, and Chinese
assistants and translators who work with foreign correspondents. At least one
journalist CPJ has documented as imprisoned in China, Hu Jia, had two interviews
he gave to foreign media listed in court documents, alongside his own articles,
as evidence for anti-state charges against him. He is serving a three-year jail
term.

On February 13, the government issued a code of conduct for
the Chinese news assistants of foreign correspondents that threatens dismissal
and loss of accreditation for engaging in “independent reporting.” The code
also obliges assistants working for foreign media organizations to spread
“positive information.” The Foreign Correspondents Club said in March that many
Chinese assistants were being contacted in person and warned not to publicize
news they learn of while reporting before it appears in state media.

How have Olympic media reforms affected Chinese journalists?
By and large they were not included in the changes. One thing that did improve in
2008 was the government's security and surveillance apparatus, which is now
being used to monitor and restrict perceived dissident activity. Several
sensitive anniversaries have heightened the risks of reporting that could
conceivably challenge the government this year, such as the already mentioned 50th
anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising in March, and June’s 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident.
On October 1, China celebrates the 60th
anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Increasingly, these
events have become tests of patriotism for the domestic media. Hong Kong’s Ming
Pao newspaper says many Chinese journalists looked on the Tiananmen
anniversary as an unofficial vacation, preferring to wait until the anniversary
passes before reporting anything negative, even about the volatile economy.

A climate of impunity for local officials who attack
journalists prevails throughout China.
Chinese newspapers frequently tell of physical violence directed at reporters
working on local corruption stories. Sometimes the perpetrators allege they are
reacting to so-called “fake” journalists, who offer to withhold negative
coverage in return for bribery. But often skirmishes occur between bona fide
news gatherers and powerful local figures or their henchmen trying to suppress the
story. Guangzhou Daily reported on
September 1 that a journalist had been hospitalized while reporting, calling it
Guangdong
province’s third attack on the press in the space of two months.As long as the central government devotes
so much energy to maintaining positive coverage, despots in the provinces will
follow their lead.

Which is not to say the domestic press is totally cowed—far
from it. Increasingly media, particularly print media, push back against the
imposed limits. Editorials are often outspoken on the issues of the day,
including government transparency and press freedom. Chinese journalists with
press credentials will often publish articles that are rejected by their
editors on their personal blogs. As the media becomes increasingly commercialized,
journalists pursue stories and readers with enthusiasm. Government propaganda officials
issue frequent directives dictating the limits of coverage on all manner of
issues, but successful editors develop a sixth sense when it comes to their
implementation. One editor told a foreign journalist that he neglected to
answer his phone before breaking sensitive news, confident that he could handle
any official remonstrance which followed.

By appearing generally cooperative, the established media is developing a
space in which it can report more freely, though errors by professional
journalists can result in demotion or reassignment. Hong Kong’s Ming Pao said propaganda officials in
the southern city of Guangzhou suspended five cable TV editors after the channel they
worked for accidentally screened a few seconds of footage from Tiananmen Square
in 1989 as part of a Hong Kong broadcaster’s
June 5 news program.

The most heavily targeted are dissidents or government critics
who report online. CPJ research found more Internet journalists jailed
worldwide than journalists working in any other medium at the end of 2008. China topped that
list of countries which imprison journalists, as it has done for 10 consecutive
years. Twenty-four of the 28 journalists in China counted in CPJ’s December 1,
2008, prison census had published on the Internet. Lawyers who take these cases
are frequently harassed and detained.

The Web site 6-4tianwang was
founded by Huang Qi, who was arrested in June 2008 after writing about
disaster-relief efforts following the Sichuan
earthquake online. Like Hu Jia,
he had spoken with foreign journalists. In a closed-door trial on August 5 that
has yet to release a verdict, he was tried for revealing state secrets. Huang
spent five years in prison from 2000-2005, the first Internet publisher CPJ
recorded jailed for subversion in China. His 2001 trial was
repeatedly delayed for unexplained reasons when the International Olympic
Committee was touring the country to assess Beijing’s bid to host the Games. From Huang’s
perspective, the effects of media reform in China before, during, and after the
Games must appear negligible indeed.

Long term, it is to be hoped that as the mainstream press challenges
the government by reporting on increasingly sensitive issues, official
tolerance of dissent from dissidents and citizen journalists will grow. That
has not yet happened.

It is clear from their treatment of public health crises that
government officials continue to put their own personal risk of embarrassment
above the public good. This has serious implications for the U.S. and the
rest of the world. In the periods between the Tangshan
earthquake in 1976 and the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan,
and even between the outbreaks of ethnic unrest in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009,
there were significant and measurable improvements in the media environment. But
with the SARS outbreak in late 2002 and the 2008 cover-up of the toxic chemical
melamine appearing in food products in supermarkets worldwide, the government
response of initial denial was very similar. The industrial substance, which
boosts protein readings in poor-quality dairy products, sickened tens of
thousands of Chinese children but was kept from the press until after the
Olympics.

The United States
and the international community need China to step up to its role as a
modern industrialized nation. The free flow of information domestically and
internationally from China
does not meet global norms. Reporting on disease outbreaks, economic
conditions, market and trading information, and, of course, issues of
corruption and human violations—virtually any subject that might highlight
shortcomings in the political system and cause embarrassment to the government—remains
a legitimate target of suppression in the eyes of the government’s vast
censorship system.Even more important
than the treatment of American and other foreign journalists in China is the threat the domestic censorship
regime poses to the free exchange of information, which the U.S. relies on.

Recommendations

Press China
to:

• Release all journalists currently imprisoned for their
work.

• Stop censoring the news.

• Allow Chinese journalists to work as reporters for foreign
news outlets, without restrictions or fear of retribution.

• End the pattern of violent retribution meted out by local
officials and others angered by critical media coverage. Bring to justice all
those responsible for such attacks.

• End the use of state secret and national security laws to
imprison journalists.

• Ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, which China
signed in 1998. Article 19 of the Covenant states: “Everyone shall have the
right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek,
receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of
frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or
through any other media of his choice.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: The date of the founding of the People’s Republic has been corrected.